I was thinking about this from a topic on here then I was on Newegg and see so many stupid reviews about USB flash drive speeds, people don't realize that USB flash drives are much slower than any HDD since flash suffers slow speeds since flash just isn't fast if you want it cheap, also this guy didn't realize that FW is faster so that gives you some idea._________________"You must control your future by taking command of your present, and fixing and learning from your past."

I use a thumb drive for work. I never considered the speed of them. I know they're not that quick, but it's never been a factor to me. I just remember the days of floppies and I am thankful that thumb drives are so much quicker.

Where I am concerned about the speed of flash memory is the SD cards for my camera. 133X is what I use. There are faster cards out now but my Nikon D50 won't write any faster.

Last edited by Bandit Bill on Thu Feb 05, 2009 12:17 am; edited 1 time in total

I have and use a both a USB flash drive and a USB 2.5 inch portable hard drive for exchanging data between systems.

I have to say personally I find the overiding factor which makes me use a USB flash drive is the size of it.

You can carry it with you anywhere. The same can't be said of a portable hard drive unless you don't mind having it in a pocket (and even 2.5 inch drives are a bit large to comfortably do that) or are willing to carry/wear something to contain it...

As others have said, all methods these days are much faster than the floppy/tape drives we used to use for exchanging data.

Whether a 300MB video file I downloaded at work takes 2 seconds or 30 seconds to transfer from my memory stick to computer I'm not too concerned about.

I have a 256MB running portable apps, a 1GB for screwing around, and a 4GB that I use for backing up my files and it has a full backup of my PSP files from a 2GB card. I might consider getting a 16GB one next year if they get cheaper (around $50-$70 like my 4GB) I'll get one since my 256MB and 1GB are showing signs that I had on a 128MB that didn't take formatting and showed as full._________________"You must control your future by taking command of your present, and fixing and learning from your past."

Well my 256MB died actually about 2 hours after posting, I was messing around with a portable app and it was slow and wouldn't remove hardware or respond so I unplugged it and it bricked on me anyway my 1GB is now running portable apps and nothing else. My 1GB is faster and has been more reliable than my 256MB was, for some reason any Lexar I use gets an issue with just stopping and bricking on me. My 1GB and 4GB are both SanDisk and have yet to give me issues once._________________"You must control your future by taking command of your present, and fixing and learning from your past."

Dungeon, forgive my ignorance, but I'm really curious about these 'portable apps'. Are they just regular utilities that are written in Java so that they can run on any hardware?_________________Intel Mini 2.0GHz C2D (4GB/120GB/SuperDrive/10.5.8 ), 120GB WD Passport, Logitech ergo k/b
iPod Touch (32GB, 3rd gen), iPod Shuffle (512MB, 1st gen)

Dungeon, forgive my ignorance, but I'm really curious about these 'portable apps'. Are they just regular utilities that are written in Java so that they can run on any hardware?

I don't think so, they are Windows only but all file for the app are kept on the flash drive to keep them off the system (the idea behind it) this is similar to U3 and U3 actually uses apps from Portable Apps for open source apps.
This explains the development if it helps you any: http://portableapps.com/development_________________"You must control your future by taking command of your present, and fixing and learning from your past."